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Monday, October 8, 2012

Photographer Acey Harper in the New York City subway by Sandra Garcia.

By Al Diazaldiaz305@aol.com

This week, photographer Acey
Harper is opening a solo exhibit in Paris,
France of his work with acrobats at the Catherine and André Hug
Gallery, (2 Rue de L'Echaudé/40 Rue de Sine). The exhibit of images, from his book, "Private Acts: The Acrobat Sublime", is a fantasy
fulfilled. Harper says, “Many people ask me how I got the book and
exhibit. Besides hard work, the answer, quite simply, is that I changed the way
I saw and photographed the world.”

Q. With all your collective experience, did the way you approached this
subject, change how you preconceive an image?
Do you see differently now?

A. Working on this project was so dramatic! I have changed my ways, transformed by unearthly visions: a trio of
25-year-old women, contortionists, bending their bodies into surreal shapes,
each mimicking the other, in a silent, synchronized ballet of twisted beauty on
the dry, cracked floor of a mile-high desert. I have witnessed two men pressing
and balancing their bodies together, creating fulcrums of flesh and power
between columns of stone. I stood, almost transfixed, under a pair of
aerialists, hanging from the rafters of an abandoned nineteenth-century power
plant, one bathed in angelic light pouring through the torn roof above, using all
her strength and grace to hold the other in space. I know these visions were
real: I photographed them, and they are in this book. As the old hymn says, “I
once was blind, but now I see.” And I do see now. Differently. Working with
acrobats, aerialists, and contortionists has changed me.

Q. Your background in photography started in photojournalism, tells us
about your early experiences in Miami.

A. Al, like you, I learned at the University of Florida. The
best classroom I ever had was working at the Independent Florida
Alligator, My years and work as a photojournalist and later, a corporate
photographer, began right there, took me to the paper in Ft. Myers, and then to Washington, DC for a few years before returning to live in
work in Miami. Those were some of the most interesting years of my
photojournalism career. Miami was (still, very much is) a great news town.
Everything, news-wise, it seems, happened in Florida: Space Shuttle launches,
Football Championships, Spring training and a new team called the Marlins.
There was big, world-shaking news that often seemed to originate in Florida and
usually, right in Miami. There was Mariel and 100,000 people came to Dade County
in less than a month, all fleeing Cuba. There were violent riots when juries
delivered controversial verdicts. There was music news, the Miami Sound Machine
was teaching the world how to Conga and a kid named Vanilla Ice came to town
with a back story that unraveled in weeks. I could not escape the drama of news
in South Florida even when I tried to move away. The day before closing on my
house in Coral Gables, Hurricane Andrew hit, taking five trees out of my yard,
busting my roof and the sale of my house.

Q. What inspired you to do this project?

A. Living just outside of San Francisco and shooting lots of Silicon
Valley corporate assignments I felt uneasy, a malaise of creativity. I was
not making photos that satisfied me. Then, I was approached to shoot
portraits to accompany a book of essays about acrobats. Originally, I saw the acrobats
as enticing subjects to photograph. But as I continued to work with them, I
soon came to recognize them as partners and collaborators in creating unique
images, which are part photography and part performance art. I worked with
each acrobat to find his or her own personal stage. I sought a location or
background that would complement the lines of their bodies and what they do, as
well as conjure a feeling or an image.

Q. Often, people are unwilling to spend a lot of time posing in
front of a camera. Was it like that with any of these performing artists?

A. First, I let them know they had a say in what we were
doing. It was collaboration. I sought their feedback and advice.

Next, both acrobats and
photographers are used to working hard and in hardship for our respective
crafts, and for this project, we shared the difficulties of bringing our
visions to life. Depending on the venue, we rose before dawn, or stood in
frigid water, or climbed down jagged rocky crevasses together. We often spent
hours rigging equipment in unfamiliar places, or working tricks and poses to
get the image we sought. We risked the unwanted attention of gawkers,
police, park guards, junkyard dogs, and even a horde of scorpions. As my cover
subject, Lauren Herley said, “It’s all just right here, right now.”

Q. So tell us Acey, what makes you click?

A. I am humbled and inspired by what I learned in the process of exploring
these acrobat dreams. Many of the performers have said that working on this
project—both creating these photos and looking at them afterward—has led them
to see themselves and their art in a whole new way. The same is true for me:
after thirty years behind the lens as a professional photographer, I feel
transformed by the experience of working with these exceptional muses; my
vision and my imagination have been liberated, the photographs I am making have
more meaning to me personally. Best of all, I am having the most fun of my
life!

Q. What’s in the bag?

A. When I began to work on this
project, I changed the way I saw and photographed. An important part of that
process was changing the tools in my bag. I gave up using zooms, with the
exception of the 70-200 2.8, and returned to using what are now called
"prime" lenses.

You remember, Al, when we were first shooting film,
we carried two or three bodies with a fixed lens on each. Usually, in those
days, we all used Nikon and it was a 24 mm, 85 mm and 180mm.

Zoom Lenses are really great and suited for fast
changing situations in photojournalism. Since I want the sharpest image I can
get, I use the 35 1.4, 50 1.4, 85 1.8 and put them on two Canon 5D Mark ll
bodies. I love those lenses particularly since i am shooting only
available light. They are the sharpest, even at low wide-open apertures, which
is how I often use them.

I do not carry a flash and depend on the light
meter in the camera bodies. So, this is my kit:

Really Right Stuff Quick Release mounting plates on
Tripod and Monopod and matching Base Plates under each camera and under
70-200 zoom

Extra Canon battery for cameras

Canon Battery Charger

Microfiber lens cloth

Essay One By Acey Harper

ah@aceyharper.com

She hangs by one hand in what they call a meat
hook, an inelegant description of a beautiful shape, which she does
seemingly without thought or care, as you or I would lean against the post
below, except that she has climbed that post and using nothing but the
lines of her body, expresses with her strength and flexibility, creating twelve
divine seconds of perfect form.

The location is mundane, a street corner on a
Sunday morning, not yet 7 AM. Her apparatus is the crosswalk signal. Even at
this hour, cars gather, waiting for the stoplight change. When it does she
ascends to her platform, an iron support bar. She is not noticed until I have
walked into the protected crosswalk, quickly placed tripod and camera, begun my
work. It is then that people look, usually from cars passing or the occasional
pedestrian. They are baffled at her appearance.

"How do you, " many people ask, "get
permission?"

I do not. The soul of these images is the sense of
danger or the unexpected. Sometimes the danger is in what they are physically
doing, other times it is in the place they are doing it. Usually, it is the
two, together. I like that feeling, both within the photo and while creating
it. The artist hangs from the light at a crosswalk. I have twelve seconds to
get into street, set up tripod and make my image.

It is a creation of artistry by her, the capturing
of it by me, in that short time frame. I am looking for the essence of her as
an artist. I am searching for the one moment that encapulates everything she is
does.

Thus, we create, make a photo and run. She did this
twice, was on the street less than five minutes, and we were done. The
onlookers had barely begun their convergence. We leave the baffled behind.

Essay Two by Acey Harper

ah@aceyharper.com

She is floating, really.

It is only a moment but, she is suspended for that briefest
instant on the edge of rising, before the falling has begun, his arms having
thrown her not carelessly, but easily, into the air above. She has surrendered
completely to her body's movement, rising in an elegant, self-made arc that
seems to signify an out of body experience, except that she is inhabiting that
body more intensely, ten feet over the concrete with no wires, no net and no
fear, than most of us do our own while simply walking the sidewalk.

He has a two-part job, give her flight and then
save her from injury on her inevitable return downward. But, it is more than that,
It is done with panache, so to speak. He is a man who does not just throw a
woman heavenward, he gives her the opportunity to make thin air her personal
arena, He raises her to the sky and she keeps going, he lets his arms drop, as
if to fall into the same revery we are feellng, no longer a part of the theater
they can create anywhere - even an alley on a day so cold, tiny snowflakes
fell, melting as soon as they touched skin or concrete - but becoming, himself,
another observer, distracted by the beauty of her flight. He is not, of course,
because it is controlled in miniscule bits of timing between them, he has done
this with her so many times he can affect an air of, "What the hell, a
woman, floating over my head," his arms and his face portraying a surprise
that is false. What is real is this: he will never let her fall, never has,
never will. She knows this.

The moment of floating is over, she reverses and
falls rapidly, his arms come up to catch her, even more rapidly, yet done so
smoothly, there is barely a sound of the catch. Hardly working, except that he
is.

I am captivated by it but do not forget my role as
I do what I am there to do, make the photo that says, "Look! Here she is,
at the very brink, all control ceded to faith in her partner, herself and her
art."

TRANSLATOR

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Miami photojournalist Al Diaz blogs about his daily work assignments as well as issues affecting visual journalists today---products, gear, technology, copyrights, events, and the latest news and info regarding the photography industry. He also posts stories by and about other photojournalists, especially current and former Miami Herald colleagues. BLOG SUBMISSIONS: If you have a blog post that you would like to share, please contact Al Diaz directly at: aldiaz305@aol.com